In recent years, nurseries and other plant and horticultural commercial operations have recognized the need for a high capacity precision seeder in their seeding operations. In such commercial seeding operations, it is desirable for the seeder to work in conjunction with a conveyor system carrying groups of soil filled pots or soil cubes or the like. Typically, the conveyor system is intermittingly actuated such that groups of the soil pots or soil cubes come into operative relationship with the seeder periodically. While such groups of soil pots or cubes are stationarily disposed, the seeder, which is normally mounted thereabove, is actuated resulting in a seed being dispensed into each soil pot or cube.
While the need for such commercial seeders has been apparent, nevertheless, a fully automatic high capacity seeder with a relatively high singulation rate has not been developed heretobefore. One principal problem area has been in seed singulation, particularly automatic singulation where the singulation rate exceeds 95 percent. Typically, seeders of the prior art do not even attempt to automatically singulate. Instead, a worker is required to manually brush the seeds about a top singulation seed plate until all or nearly all of the seed openings therein are filled. This manual brushing is required after each separate actuation of the seeder.
Even after the seeds are singulated, many seeders of the prior art have problems efficiently transferring the singulated seeds to the soil pots. In this regard, typical problems encountered are jamming and clogging of the singulated seeds within the transfer structure and singulated seeds intergrating with other singulated seeds during the transferring operation.